That's not a bad choice at all. She's not conventionally pretty, and she's wiry and intense. And she's about the right age (except that nobody really knows how old Marian is). I pictured someone more solid than Martha Plimpton while I was reading, but she would do very well.

No, not Martha Plimpton; she's too skinny. In The Renewable Virgin there's a scene narrated by Fiona, the college professor, in which she marvels at the way Kelly can eat and still stay slender. Then she thinks that Marian looks like a person who would put on five pounds if someone said the word "chocolate" in her presence. So Marian isn't skinny. I guess Frances McDormand has the right body type, but I just can't see her as Marian. Too matronly.

I'd planned on having Marian turn 40 in Full Frontal Murder and even wrote some scenes about it. But her birthday got in the way of the story; there's a lot going on in that book, and the trauma of facing the Big Four-Oh simply didn't belong there. There was no place for it. So I cut all references to her birthday, planning to include the event in the next book. But of course there was no next book; so that leaves Marian, like Jack Benny, perpetually 39 years old.

Well, at least we know how old Marian is now. Sandra Bullock might manage in another ten years, if she doesn't get stuck in the romantic comedy niche the way Meg Ryan did. Right now Bullock is cute and likable, not generally the traits you expect to find in a NYPD detective. But that may change by the time she reaches forty.

About Martha Plimpton -- she was skinny back when she was playing all those sullen adolescent roles. But in Showtime's attempt at reviving The Defenders, she'd pretty much lost that anorexic look. I haven't seen her for a couple of years, though.

Martha Plimpton is still slender-framed (though, as you say, not anorexic in the popular Hollywood manner). I saw her play Laura in The Glass Menagerie in Chicago a couple years ago.

A while back I suggested Lindsay Crouse for Marian; she's versatile enough to play almost anything, seems about the right age range. She has played glamorous on occasion, but has no vanity about playing plain (and her face isn't a conventionally "pretty" one).

Caruso's a tough one. Nathan Lane is the right idea -- chubby, outrageous but lovable, larger than life -- but he'd need to be put through the 200% or 300% setting on the enlarger first.

But I love the challenge of casting remembered real-life people, just to see how the "equivalents" work from one generation to another. That was the appeal of Chaplin for instance (Kevin Kline as Douglas Fairbans, yes indeed). I always thought Julie Andrews should have had the chance to play Irene Dunne in some biopic too. Now who's Rosa Ponselle and Emmy Destinn?